HOW NOT TO GO CRAZY OVER SADDAM'S UNDERPANTS

Horsefeathers ^ | 5-22-2005 | Yale Kramer

[ritt]

There is an old clinical anecdote, probably apocryphal, that teachers in medical school sometimes use to illustrate the compelling power of delusions to medical students. It goes something like this: A young, inexperienced psychiatric resident, in the course of interviewing a patient, discovered that the patient suffered from the delusion that he, the patient, was dead. The young psychiatrist then proceeded to try gently and tactfully to reason with the patient to see the reality and give up his delusion. The psychiatrist tried everything he could think of to dissuade the patient but still, after twenty or thirty minutes, the patient remained calmly convinced that he was a corpse. Frustrated, and by this time impatient and irritated, the psychiatrist whipped out the small pin he used to perform some of his neurological tests and stuck the tip of the patient’s finger, drawing a drop of blood.

“There, you see, would that happen if you were dead? What does that show you?”

The patient smiled and said quietly, “That dead men bleed...”